The best NVMe SSD for gaming is a PCIe 4.0 drive with 1TB or 2TB of space. Flagship drives such as the Samsung 990 Pro and WD_BLACK SN850X are the fastest, but cheaper PCIe 4.0 drives load games within a second or two of them.
Storage affects loading and stutter rather than frame rate, as our complete guide to FPS, frame times and latency explains.
This guide compares four drives, then explains which specs affect games and how to check that a drive fits your PC.
As an Amazon Associate, Gamesness earns from qualifying purchases. We have not bench-tested these drives ourselves. The picks are based on the manufacturers’ published specifications, and each link goes to the Amazon listing we checked for that model.
NVMe SSDs for gaming compared
| SSD | Capacity in this listing | Interface | Rated sequential read | Tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung 990 Pro | 2TB | PCIe 4.0 | Up to 7,450 MB/s | Flagship |
| WD_BLACK SN850X | 2TB | PCIe 4.0 | Up to 7,300 MB/s | Flagship |
| Crucial P310 | 2TB | PCIe 4.0 | Up to 7,100 MB/s | Value |
| Kingston NV3 | 1TB | PCIe 4.0 | Up to 6,000 MB/s | Budget |
Speeds are the manufacturers’ rated maximums. Real loading times depend on the game and the rest of the PC.
The picks
Samsung 990 Pro: fastest all-rounder
The 990 Pro is Samsung’s top PCIe 4.0 drive, rated at up to 7,450 MB/s sequential read. It comes with or without a heatsink.
Pick it if you also edit video or move large files, where its sustained speed shows. For games alone it is more drive than you need.
Check price on AmazonWD_BLACK SN850X: flagship alternative
The SN850X is rated at up to 7,300 MB/s read and 6,300 MB/s write in its 2TB version. It trades places with the 990 Pro on price from week to week.
Buy whichever of the two is cheaper on the day. In games you won’t tell them apart.
Check price on AmazonCrucial P310: best value at 2TB
The P310 is rated at up to 7,100 MB/s and usually costs noticeably less than the flagships. It uses QLC flash, a denser type of memory that is cheaper per gigabyte but slows down more during very long writes.
That trade-off rarely matters for a game library, which is written once and then mostly read. It is the pick for a large, affordable game drive.
Check price on AmazonKingston NV3: budget pick
The NV3 is rated at up to 6,000 MB/s and is one of the cheapest PCIe 4.0 drives from a major brand. This listing is the 1TB version.
It is the sensible choice for replacing a hard disk or a small boot drive in an older PC. It also works in PCIe 3.0 slots at reduced speed.
Check price on AmazonWhat matters in an SSD for gaming
Any NVMe beats any hard disk. The biggest jump is from a hard disk to an SSD of any kind. The step from a budget NVMe drive to a flagship one is small by comparison.
Capacity beats speed. A full drive forces you to uninstall games. A 2TB mid-range drive is more useful than a 1TB flagship at the same price.
Sequential speed is not the whole story. The MB/s figure on the box measures large file transfers. Games read many small files, so drives with very different headline speeds load games in similar times.
Leave free space. SSDs slow down when nearly full. Keep 10–20% of the drive empty.
Will it fit your PC?
- Check for an M.2 slot. Look in the motherboard or laptop manual for an M.2 slot that supports NVMe (also written as PCIe), not SATA only.
- Check the length. All four drives here are M.2 2280, meaning 22mm wide and 80mm long. Most desktops and many laptops take that size.
- Check the PCIe generation. A PCIe 4.0 drive works in a PCIe 3.0 slot but is limited to about 3,500 MB/s.
- Plan for a heatsink. Use the motherboard’s M.2 heatsink if it has one. Don’t stack a drive’s own heatsink under a motherboard heatsink.
To find out what your motherboard supports without opening the case, use the steps in how to check your PC specs on Windows. If you are deciding whether storage or another part is the better upgrade, the bottleneck calculator and PC build budget planner can help.
After installing
Clone your old drive or reinstall Windows, then move your games across using each launcher’s move feature. Run a before-and-after loading test with one of the free benchmarking tools to confirm the drive is running at full speed.
If games still hitch on an SSD, the cause is elsewhere. Our troubleshooting guide for stutter and other game problems covers the other causes of stutter.
